evolving Knowledge

The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplaceby Gary Chapman and Paul White(Communication/Motivation/Leadership)

The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace applies the love language concept to the workplace. This book helps supervisors and managers effectively communicate appreciation and encouragement to their employees, resulting in higher levels of job satisfaction, healthier relationships between managers and employees, and decreased cases of burnout.

Ideal for both the profit and non-profit sectors, the principles presented in this book have a proven history of success in businesses, schools, medical offices, churches, and industry. Each book contains an access code for the reader to take a comprehensive online MBA Inventory (Motivating By Appreciation).

The inventory is designed to provide a clearer picture of an individual’s primary language of appreciation and motivation as experienced in a work-related setting. This assists managers and supervisors in communicating effectively to their team members, and thus building a more positive and productive work environment.

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedomby Don Miguel Ruiz(Communication, Self-Management, Inspiration)In The Four Agreements, bestselling author don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, The Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love.

The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace applies the love language concept to the workplace. This book helps supervisors and managers effectively communicate appreciation and encouragement to their employees, resulting in higher levels of job satisfaction, healthier relationships between managers and employees, and decreased cases of burnout.

Ideal for both the profit and non-profit sectors, the principles presented in this book have a proven history of success in businesses, schools, medical offices, churches, and industry. Each book contains an access code for the reader to take a comprehensive online MBA Inventory (Motivating By Appreciation).

The inventory is designed to provide a clearer picture of an individual’s primary language of appreciation and motivation as experienced in a work-related setting. This assists managers and supervisors in communicating effectively to their team members, and thus building a more positive and productive work environment.

Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation―each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions.

Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives―and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble.

Do you feel like your time is constantly being hijacked by other people’s agendas?

If you answered yes to any of these, the way out is the Way of the Essentialist.

The Way of the Essentialist isn’t about getting more done in less time. It’s about getting only the right things done. It is not a time management strategy, or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution towards the things that really matter.

By forcing us to apply a more selective criteria for what is Essential, the disciplined pursuit of less empowers us to reclaim control of our own choices about where to spend our precious time and energy – instead of giving others the implicit permission to choose for us.

Essentialism is not one more thing – it’s a whole new way of doing everything. A must-read for any leader, manager, or individual who wants to learn who to do less, but better, in every area of their lives, Essentialism is a movement whose time has come.

Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Actionby Simon Sinek(Business Strategy/Communication/Negotiation/Motivation)

Simon Sinek is leading a movement to build a world in which the vast majority of us are inspired by the work we do. Millions have already seen his video on TED.com about the importance of knowing why we do what we do. Start with Why takes the concept even deeper.

Any person or organization can explain what they do; some can explain how they are different or better; but very few can clearly articulate why. WHY is not about money or profit – those are results.WHY is the thing that inspires us and inspires those around us.

From Martin Luther King, Jr. to Steve Jobs to the Wright Brothers, Start with Why shows that the leaders who inspire all think, act, and communicate in the exact same way – and it’s the complete opposite of what everyone else does. Drawing on a wide range of real-life stories, it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired – and it all starts with WHY.

What's at the heart of every thriving person, every thriving marriage, kid, and business? Hope! The Hope Quotient is a revolutionary new method for measuring-and dramatically increasing-your level of hope. Hope is more than a feeling; it's the by-product of seven key factors. When these are present in your life, they cause hope to thrive.Factor 1: Recharge Your Batteries Nobody does well running on empty. Factor 2: Raise Your Expectations You don't get what you deserve; you get what you expect..Factor 3: Refocus on the Future It's time to throw away your rear view mirror. No one goes forward well when they are looking back. Factor 4: Play to Your Strengths Be yourself; everyone else is taken. Factor 5: Refuse to Go At It Alone Never underestimate the power of support. Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto. Factor 6: Replace Burnout with Balance Burning the candle at both ends isn't as bright as you think. Factor 7: Play Great Defense Avoid these five toxic hope killers that can threaten your future.Using seven years of research, powerful biblical illustrations, and compelling human-interest stories, Ray Johnston explains how these seven essential factors will support, sustain, and strengthen your hope. And when consciously built into your life, how they will unleash hope in your marriage, your kids, your career, your church, your community, and the world. With biblical examples of Joshua, King David, and Nehemiah, as well as stories of some amazingly hopeful people today, Pastor Ray shares the only way to get more hope is to consciously build it into your life. Your HQ is the most important contributor to your overall success. Because when hope rises, not just positive thinking but solid hope from God, everything changes.

Inner Critic Inner Success straddles the worlds of business and self-help in a way that’s bursting with smarts yet is full of soul. It’s a guide to finding the sweet spot in life where you can hold both success and doubt in a way that feels actionable and spacious instead of pointless and stuck. This book helps you capitalize on the dynamic and powerful relationship between critic and success. With attention and awareness, you’ll become adept at seeing the dynamics of how success and doubt play off each other on a daily basis. You’ll begin to transform that negative Inner Critic voice into a beam of light that spotlights your most cherished hopes, values and strengths. It challenges you to define success in a radical new way — on YOUR terms (versus what society, culture and business dictate) and from the perspective of how you feel about success not just how you think.

One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Wayby Robert Maurer, PhD(Continuous Improvement/Change Management)

The essential guide to kaizen―the art of making great and lasting change through small, steady steps―is now repackaged as an impulse paperback with a dazzling new cover that speaks to its proper positioning as a self-help/inspiration title that’s applicable to business as well.

Written by Dr. Robert Maurer, a psychologist on the staff of both the University of Washington School of Medicine and Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center, and an expert on kaizen who speaks and consults nationally, One Small Step Can Change Your Life is the gentle but potent way to effect change. It is for anyone who wants to lose weight. Or quit smoking. Or write a novel, start an exercise program, get out of debt, or conquer shyness and meet new people.

Beginning by outlining the all-important role that fear plays in every type of change―and kaizen’s ability to neutralize it by circumventing the brain’s built-in resistance to new behavior―Dr. Maurer then explains the 7 Small Steps: how to Think Small Thoughts, Take Small Actions, Solve Small Problems, and more. He shows how to perform mind sculpture―visualizing virtual change so that real change comes more naturally. Why small rewards lead to big returns by internalizing motivation. How great discoveries are made by paying attention to the little details most of us overlook. Rooted in the two-thousand-year-old wisdom of the Tao Te Ching―“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”―here is the way to change your life without fear, without failure, and to begin a new, easy regimen of continuous improvement.

The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Doby Clotaire Rapaille(Branding/Marketing)

Why are people around the world so very different? What makes us live, buy, even love as we do? The answers are in the codes.

In The Culture Code, internationally revered cultural anthropologist and marketing expert Clotaire Rapaille reveals for the first time the techniques he has used to improve profitability and practices for dozens of Fortune 100 companies. His groundbreaking revelations shed light not just on business but on the way every human being acts and lives around the world.

Rapaille’s breakthrough notion is that we acquire a silent system of codes as we grow up within our culture. These codes—the Culture Code—are what make us American, or German, or French, and they invisibly shape how we behave in our personal lives, even when we are completely unaware of our motives. What’s more, we can learn to crack the codes that guide our actions and achieve new understanding of why we do the things we do.

Rapaille has used the Culture Code to help Chrysler build the PT Cruiser—the most successful American car launch in recent memory. He has used it to help Procter & Gamble design its advertising campaign for Folger’s coffee – one of the longest lasting and most successful campaigns in the annals of advertising. He has used it to help companies as diverse as GE, AT&T, Boeing, Honda, Kellogg, and L’Oréal improve their bottom line at home and overseas. And now, in The Culture Code, he uses it to reveal why Americans act distinctly like Americans, and what makes us different from the world around us.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talkingby Susan Cain(Psychology/Leadership/Teamwork)

At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society.

In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts—from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.

People Over Profitby Dale Partridge(Strategy/Management/Success)

Every day major headlines tell the story of a new and better American marketplace. Established corporations have begun reevaluating the quality of their products, the ethics of their supply chain, and how they can give back by donating a portion of their profit to meaningful causes. Meanwhile, millions of entrepreneurs who want a more responsible and compassionate marketplace have launched a new breed of socially focused business models.

Sevenly founder Dale Partridge uncovers the seven core beliefs shared by consumers, starters, and leaders behind this transformation. These beliefs have enabled Dale to build a multimillion-dollar company that is revolutionizing the marketplace. He believes they are the secret to creating a sustainable world that values honesty over deception, transparency over secrecy, authenticity over hype, and ultimately, people over profit.